


Ring of Fire

by Sorrel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-30
Updated: 2010-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-13 11:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel/pseuds/Sorrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It’s a weird life that Gabriel has, but it’s his and it’s good and he likes it.  And then some lunatic kidnaps him and locks him in a warehouse and sets it on fire."  AKA a side story for twentysomething's Bones AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ring of Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Excerpts From Carver Edlund's Magnum Opus](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1951) by twentysomething. 



Gabriel actually likes Sam, probably at least partly because Cas and Winchester complain about him so much. He’d be a lot happier if Sam wasn’t so _ridiculously fucking huge,_ but Gabriel got over his own vertical deficiency a long time ago. (Okay, mostly.) Sam’s intelligent, funny in a nerdy kind of way (his favorite kind!) and not as much of a pussy as Winchester always made him sound. He’s also stupidly attractive and due to that minor decontamination incident that was absolutely not Gabriel’s fault, Gabriel happens to know that Sam has abs you could use to scrub laundry.

So, yeah, it’s not exactly a hardship hanging out with the guy. He likes flirting with him just enough to make Sam blush and shuffle his feet like a super-awkward little kid, and he likes getting his geek on with someone who has a basic understanding of modern pop culture. (Because Cas is, like, genetically lacking the capability, Jesus Christ, he almost cried over the _Star Trek_ thing that one time.) He likes harassing Sam about that diner waitress he’s stupid over; it’s the one single thing he and Winchester have in common.

And it’s not like the whole stupid bunch of them aren’t insanely tied up in each other anyway. Gabriel’s known Castiel since they were both tiny extremely well-dressed children hiding behind the tree at the annual Christmas charity ball, and they share a love of science and a hatred of their family’s money. He lets Castiel’s fucking bearded grad student live over his garage even though Chuck has, like, enough money for two houses _besides_ the one in Florida from his royalty money, because he’s gotten too used to invading Chuck’s living room at four in the morning to play Halo when he can’t sleep. He got a raging crush on Jo Harvelle when Winchester bullied Dr. Singer into giving her a job at the Jeffersonian and she smacked him down like the righteous fist of God when he asked her out, and now they watch _Dr. Sexy M.D._ every Thursday night on the stupidly large screen in her office and gossip about their coworkers. (He might even have braided her hair that one time, but he likes to pretend that didn’t happen.)

He even gets along with Dr. Milton, who’s sort-of-technically their boss (and Winchester’s sort-of ex, which made things really super awkward when she started, until Castiel decided not to murder her face off). She lets him do his experiments _way_ more than Dr. Singer ever did, even if she does make him write five-page essays justifying _why,_ first, because she’s evil and well-aware of his hatred of complete sentences.

Honestly, the whole Sam thing was probably inevitable from the start, because Winchester has a disturbing habit of adopting people. One would think having an actual biological son would be enough for any sane man, but noooo, Winchester has this compulsive need to look after every stray cat and pathetic human being that crosses his path, which explains so much about why he’s nesting with Castiel when Gabriel thinks about it, which he really tries not to. Maybe it’s because of the younger brother they all know exists and know absolutely nothing about because Winchester’s face goes DEFCON One if someone brings him up, but whatever the reason, Winchester adopted Cas and he adopted Jo and Judge Harvelle adopted him back and then, after a great deal of whining about Sam, he showed up at the diner with the (really, just seriously oversized) Dr. Campbell in tow and everyone knew that Winchester had adopted him too.

They’re all absolutely terrible at keeping things professional because they’re all incurably nosy and have no sense of privacy. Within a year of Winchester’s presence in their lives they were all spending enough time at Winchester’s stupid fucking diner that they paid for the owner’s vacation to Aruba. And then Sam was with them, too, and he lurked in the corner and laughed at Gabriel’s jokes and didn’t give Chuck a super-awkward look more than once or twice at _most_ and was obviously charmed by Cas and bickered with Winchester like an old married couple, and Gabriel knew he was staying.

And even the crush on Sam was totally predictable, because the terribly earnest, federally employed, hippie liberal Dr. Campbell is everything that his parents would hate, so _naturally_ Gabriel wants him like he wants a Snickers bar after a long day. Then Gabriel started to actually _like_ him, and Sam seems to like him back. Weird.

So here he is with Sam Campbell for a friend, and Gabriel’s crush (mostly) goes away around the time when Gabriel introduces him to the beautiful soul-suck called World of Warcraft and Sam starts texting him stupid shit under the pretext of taking client notes on his Blackberry, and it’s good. It’s a weird life that Gabriel has, but it’s his and it’s good and he likes it.

And then some lunatic kidnaps him and locks him in a warehouse and sets it on fire.

 **~*~**

A lot of it’s kind of a blur, but there are some things that stand out. He remembers the smell of smoke waking him up, still hazy from the drugs. He remembers the heat, and the crackling of the fire, the red and orange playing across his eyelids as he fought to keep them open. He remembers the flames crawling slowly across the floor like some living thing, like a predator, closing in on him for the killing stroke.

He remembers the sharp report of gunfire, one-two-three, _blam blam blam_ , and he remembers a lot of shouting and then someone hitting the sprinkler system. He remembers someone grabbing him, cool steady hands checking over him for injury, and then someone bigger behind him, grabbing him up in a fireman’s carry and taking him out into the fresh, cool night air. He remembers lying on the ground, waiting for the ambulance, while the same hands- Castiel’s hands- held onto him, one over his radial pulse and the other gripping the back of his neck as if to prevent him from running away. He stayed like this till the ambulance came.

Later, after he gets out of the hospital, the very soft-spoken police officer fills things in for him. The man who kidnapped him had somehow found out about his family, and was looking for a payout. His family “refused to negotiate with terrorists,” a fact that leaves Castiel cold and furious for like _six months_ after it’s all over, but Gabriel isn’t really surprised. Winchester took over the case by brute force, apparently, trampling all over the other agent who’d been assigned. (Which is a little impressive, actually, because Agent Henrickson is a hardass of the first order and hates Winchester like Gabriel hates diet sodas.) Then everyone had pulled together and managed to find him, and Winchester and Castiel had come racing to his rescue and then Winchester put three bullets in the chest of the guy who’d taken him, some tall thin creeper named Alistair.

Eventually the hospital gets sick of his whining and Castiel’s incessant check-ins and sends him home because the drugs are out of his system anyway. Castiel shows up to pick him up and ushers him into the backseat of Winchester’s car, fussing over him like he’s gonna keel over at every moment, while Winchester makes apologetic faces at him in the rearview mirror. Gabriel manages to keep him from _moving in_ to his house by promising that Jo is going to check on him, which is a lie that becomes truth when she shows up with the biggest box of candy he’s ever seen. (This is why Jo is his favorite.)

He recovers from the smoke inhalation quickly enough, and manages to cope with the boredom for all of a week before he goes in and shouts back and forth with Dr. Singer for like an hour and then is allowed to go back to work. Castiel makes horrified faces when he sees Gabriel at his work station, but Gabriel just grins at him and goes ahead with some watermelon explosion for the sake of science and eventually, things go back to normal.

 **~*~**

Only normal isn’t exactly the same.

People get weird around him now. They try not to, he can tell, but it’s like they just can’t help themselves. Dr. Milton lets him do his experiments without making him write essays first, which is nice but kind of annoying when he knows she’s doing it because she feels sorry for him. Chuck just sort of retreats into writing and stares weirdly at Gabriel over the top of his laptop, which: okay, no, he’s not dealing with that. Jo _touches_ him a lot more, which he would just like to say: hello, not complaining about the hot blonde putting her hands on him, it’s actually really comforting, but Gabriel feels really stupid about liking it for non-sexy reasons and that makes him grumpy.

And then there’s Cas. On the job Castiel is just as calmly professional as ever, but now he asks all sorts of distressing questions about Gabriel’s mental health, which- really? Really? Dr. Castiel Meyer, the man who thinks processed sugar is the devil and is stupidly in love with _Dean fucking Winchester,_ is worried about the state of Gabriel’s mental health? Seriously, just no.

The only person who manages a decent semblance of normal behavior is Winchester, who still glares at him and throws bits of paper at his head and makes _kill me now_ faces when Gabriel goes off on one of his tangents. It’s sort of relaxing, actually, which is not something he’d thought he would _ever think ever_ about Dean Winchester. Gabriel is supremely comfortable among people who make fun of him; it’s a flaw instilled on a genetic level and also because he has asshole older brothers.

“Maybe that’s why you feel comfortable with him,” Sam suggests, when Gabriel explains this to him. “He reminds you of your family.”

“ _No,_ ” Gabriel says, staring at Sam with abject horror. This is literally the worst thing he has ever heard, and hello! Got kidnapped and almost burned to death! “Dean is _not like_ my brothers. _No._ ”

Sam’s eyebrows go up, and he smirks. “It sounds like I hit a nerve,” he says, in his ostentatious therapist-voice, which Gabriel knows for a fact he only uses when he wants to be annoying. “Are you sure you don’t have anything to tell me?”

Gabriel glares at him. “You are not my therapist,” he informs him.

Sam only laughs. “You’re in _my_ office, dude,” he points out. “Seems like maybe you’d like to change that.”

Gabriel will voluntarily see a therapist literally only on the threat of death. Maybe not even then. He still has nightmares about the time when he was ten when he decided he had to have been adopted and his parents freaked out in their cool, utterly-lacking-in-emotion kind of way, and he spent about half his free afternoons sitting in the office of some bearded older dude who talked about acceptance. No. Gabriel doesn’t care how nice Sam’s abs are; he is not spilling his guts to someone who takes notes on his childhood. It’s not happening.

“Lies and calumny,” he announces, and grabs Sam’s Blackberry while Sam is busy grinning sort of dopily. Sam’s expression deep-sixes instantly into a sort of betrayed despair, because if people invented phones you could surgically attach Sam would be the first volunteer, and Gabriel shoves it into his pocket with a victorious smile. “I am here to demand that you join me in the consumption of alcohol in a manly manner. Your phone will be returned to you along with your inevitable hangover.”

“Gabriel, I’ve got client information on that,” Sam says pathetically, and Gabriel just smiles, because, _got you, motherfucker._

“Guess you’d better say yes, then, huh?” he says, and when Sam sighs Gabriel knows he’s won.

 **~*~**

Many hours later they’re drunk but not, like, _fucked up._ (Yet, anyway.) Sam’s staring hopelessly at his waitress, and she’s sort of dimpling back at him when he’s not looking, and it’s so utterly tragic that Gabriel actually, literally, cannot take it anymore.

“Stay put, next round’s on me,” he orders, and Sam nods with the solemn obedience of the overly intoxicated as Gabriel slides out of the booth. “Seriously. Don’t move.”

Sam’s waitress, whose name is actually Jess, lets him come up to the counter and doesn’t give him a withering look, which is really all the encouragement he needs. (Jess is famous for being ruthlessly impersonal if she doesn’t like you.) He leans against the counter and gives her his best grin while she’s busy ringing in an order. “Hey. I’m Gabriel.”

“Yeah, I know, _Dr. Bright._ ” She doesn’t even look up from the screen, even though he knows she’s been staring at the shaggy behemoth at his table all night and she’s not stupid enough to think that he’s trying to pick her up _himself_. “You know you’re not strangers around here, right? You guys basically pay my rent every month.”

Well, this is probably true. Castiel tends to tip a hundred percent because money management is not one of his personal skills and he has some deeply rooted _noblesse oblige_ , and Sam does the same because he wants in her pants. “So maybe you could see your way through to letting us buy you a drink when you get off?”

She does look up then, her eyes narrowed. “Maybe I’m working the late shift.”

Gabriel shakes his head confidently. “Nope. You never do on Thursdays, you probably have to get up early, I’m guessing class?” Her look gets even more suspicious, which is basically confirmation, and Gabriel holds up his hands defensively before she can decide that he’s a creepy stalker and impale him in the face with a swizzle stick. “Hey, you said it yourself, we’re here a lot.”

Jess finishes ringing in her order and then looks at him, head tilted, a confident smirk on her face. She manages to look even more attractive in her disdain, which should be against the laws of hotness except see above, re: his fondness for people who mock him. “So you want to buy me a drink, huh? Why Dr. Bright, this is so _sudden_.”

Definitely not that stupid. “It’s Gabriel, and no,” he says with dignity. “I want my _friend_ to buy you a drink, because his pining is getting pathetic and only you can put him out of his misery.” Gabriel shifts to point an accusing finger at an oblivious Sam, who is too busy playing with his straw to realize that his fate is being decided right this second. “I mean, I know he’s a sad example of the species, but I’m hoping you might be able to take pity on him so I can get some peace and quiet.”

He turns back just in time to see her face soften into something sweetly affectionate as she looks at Sam, and he grins. “Yes! I knew it!”

“Pretty smug, aren’t you,” she sighs, which is like saying, _you like chocolate, I guess?_ It’s just a fundamental part of his nature. “Honestly though, why do you care so much? You don’t strike me as the altruistic type.”

He is really, really not. “I told you, I’m tired of his moping,” Gabriel tries, but just then he makes the mistake of glancing back at Sam’s dopey, drunk face and he can feel a fond smile curling at the corners of his mouth, totally out of his control. Fuck.

“Uh-huh,” Jess says flatly. “Nothing to do with you, right?” The insinuation in her voice is pretty clear.

Okay, so maybe it’s a tiny bit more than just a crush. And maybe that’s obvious to _everyone in the world_ except Sam. But that doesn’t mean that Gabriel doesn’t want him to be happy. Kind of the opposite, in fact.

“He really is kind of pathetic over you,” Gabriel says desperately. “And you stare back at him all the time, and it is actually a very sad state of affairs, so I thought I’d say something. That’s all.”

She folds her arms over the counter and leans in to study him for a long, silent moment. Gabriel is used to being stared at, though, because Cas is a creeper and Winchester seems to think it’s intimidating. “What do you do?” she asks finally, and then adds, when he looks confused, “At the Jeffersonian, I mean. You’re not a bone guy like the other two, or an artist like the blonde with the gorgeous jewelry. So what is it that you do?”

Gabriel normally avoids talking about his job with pretty girls, but he isn’t trying to pick her up for _himself,_ so what the hell. “Not that I know why you care, but I’m basically the bug and slime guy.” _And everything else non-corpse-related guy,_ he thinks, but “bug and slime” gets the point across, so whatever.

She breaks out in a dazzling smile, which is _even more attractive_ than the disdainful look. Now that _is_ breaking the laws of hotness. “Well, I’m a law student, so I guess that’s something we have in common.” While he’s processing this bizarre non-sequitor, she grabs a couple of beers from underneath the counter, opens them with a practiced twist of her wrist that makes him think irresistibly of more carnal applications, and then slides them across the counter. “I’m off in half an hour, and then you can _both_ buy me a drink. What do you say?”

She cannot _possibly_ be saying what it sounds like she’s saying. But on the other hand, it does accomplish his goal of getting her over to the table and communicating with Sam in a way that doesn’t involve dopey staring matches. He’s gonna call it a win.

“Sounds awesome,” he says, and takes his beers. “See you in thirty.”

 **~*~**

 _Okay, so she *did* mean it the way it sounded._

 **~*~**

Gabriel has a terrible hangover the next morning, but he’s at work nonetheless, because murder waits for no man. (Or something. Actually technically murder _does_ have to wait for man because the act of murder is one person being killed by another person, so unless you’re getting _really_ technical and going on the whole Lord of the Rings, “I’m not man,” thing, then- Anyway.) Dr. Milton is giving him weird looks, perhaps because of the way he’s stumbling around with a confused look on his face, but Gabriel just sticks to his workstation, runs tests on his particulates, and tries not to think.

He’s in the middle of failing miserably at this last goal (seriously, last night was the hottest thing to ever happen to him _in his life_ ) when Castiel shows up at his elbow, frowning ostentatiously. “Have you determined the source of the metal fragments left in the ribcage?”

Cas never changes. “I’ve been here for half an hour,” Gabriel tells him, more-or-less patiently. “Cut me some slack.”

One eyebrow quirks. “Normally you like to brag that you can be finished in ten minutes or less.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not at my best this morning. I’ll be done in a minute.”

“Hmm.” Castiel studies him. “Dr. Campbell called the lab earlier, looking for you.”

“Really?” It’s his imagination that his voice went up that high, he tells himself. “I wonder what he wanted.”

“I don’t know, as he hung up when I told him you weren’t in yet. But he sounded annoyed.”

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck._ It wasn’t like Gabriel _snuck out_ or anything; they’d been at his house. He wasn’t trying to hide from them, he just had to go to work. He left them keys to one of his spare cars, since he’d been the designated driver the night before, and he started a pot of coffee. He thought he covered all the etiquette.

“Dunno what that’s about, man,” Gabriel says, with a casualness he doesn’t feel. He fakes nonchalance with a shrug. “I’ll find out later, soon as I’m done with the case.”

“Hmm,” Castiel says again, but he leaves without more than one last, suspicious look. Gabriel very carefully doesn’t breathe an obvious sigh of relief. Ever since Castiel started following Winchester to crime scenes he’s gotten corrupted; he actually _notices_ personal problems now, without even being told. It’s wrong and unnatural.

A few minutes later, Gabriel has his results in hand and is poking around on the internet looking for potential weapons with the right metallic composition when his cell phone buzzes angrily at him. He checks it on reflex and his breath catches in his throat, because it’s a message from Jess.

This is a surprise on more than just the obvious level, because he’s actually pretty sure he didn’t have her number saved, but there it is on his screen nonetheless. Hardly daring to breathe, he flips his phone open and thumbs up the message.

 _I wanted morning sex before class, but I had to make do with Sam. ):_

Gabriel stares at it for a long moment, then starts snickering. _yeah like thats a hardship_ he sends back. _i had work_

He has just enough time to click over to the next webpage before his phone grabs his attention again. _Sam called there, jackass._

 _we live in dc its called traffic_

He doesn’t even bother to try and go back to his computer this time. _Okay, that’s fair. You have to make it up to me, though._

Gabriel grins like an idiot at his phone. _not a problem u free tonite?_

 _I could be persuaded. Sam’s another matter. He was grumpy._

 _think i can manage i give backrubs_

 _…I’m out of class at six._

“Score!” Gabriel says out loud, then looks around to see if anyone heard him. Chuck looks at him warily, but Chuck always looks like that. Gabriel turns back to his computer.

Half an hour later he has an assortment of possible murder weapons and sends an email to Castiel, cc’d to Winchester and Dr. Milton because they’ve been getting on his case about being “in the loop.” Work dealt with, he calls his favorite restaurant and makes reservations for three, then opens up a new email to Sam. In it he takes another twenty minutes to describe (in complete sentences, even) all of the utterly filthy things he plans to do for dessert, if only Sam will consent to dinner. It includes chocolate and cocksucking, two of his favorite things, and when he’s finished he waits another five minutes before he sends it, until he knows for a fact that Sam’s in the middle of a meeting. Consult or no, Sam is biologically incapable of not checking his Blackberry. Gabriel wants kind of desperately to be a fly on a wall when he reads _that_.

Everything taken care of, Gabriel eyes his pile of non-murder test results to file and then gets up and wanders over to Jo’s office. He’s sort of torn about whether he’s going to spill this incredibly juicy bit of personal gossip as soon as he gets in the door or if he’ll be able to hold out until he needs it for trade, but when he gets there he finds both Cas and Winchester in there, arguing about farm equipment.

“Pitchforks! Who the hell murders someone with a pitchfork? What the fuck is this, some Salem witch trial bullshit? I mean come on!”

When Winchester is annoyed, he makes sure that everyone knows it. “Maybe it was a crime of opportunity,” Castiel says calmly, because Castiel is mentally diseased and thinks that Winchester’s temper tantrums are goddamn adorable. “The marks were on the front of his ribcage, the directionality was upwards, which means that it was very likely an unplanned attack. Otherwise the attacker would have had the sense to attack from behind. The victim was not a small man, and he was well-known for his reputation as a fighter.”

“You’re assuming that criminals have _sense,_ ” Winchester sighs, but he’s got that slump to his shoulders which means that he basically agrees with Castiel, what the fuck else was new. “Gabriel! Get in here. We’ve got three possible sites, tell me where I should start looking.”

Unlike Castiel, Gabriel doesn’t get off on being told what to do, but he’s in a supremely good mood and for once, not inclined to argue for the sake of arguing. “Sure, let me take a look,” he says, and while Winchester gives him a shocked face at his unusual compliance Gabriel snags the file out of his hands and sits down on the corner of Jo’s desk. It doesn’t take long. “This one,” he says, and hands Winchester the printout. “Definitely.”

Winchester gives him the look that’s famous for getting confessions. “Just like that?”

“I could take half an hour to explain to you how I reached that conclusion, if you like,” Gabriel suggests, and the horrified face that Winchester makes in response is _epic._ Seriously, Gabriel’s having just the best day ever.

“ _No,_ ” Winchester says, and then sighs again. “Okay, I’ll take it. Cas? Ready to roll?”

Castiel looks apologetic but firm, an expression that Gabriel knows for a fact he’s honed from experience with Jack. “I’m sorry, Dean, but I can’t leave now. We have the cause of death but there are still several irregularities I want to investigate if we want to ensure that the case holds up in court.”

Winchester gets the constipated look that means that he’s learned to hate doing fieldwork without his snugglebunny (oh god why did Gabriel just have that thought, why why why). “I’m just checking out a site, not interrogating a witness. I need science backup.”

“I’m not the only science expert,” Castiel says gently, and Gabriel thinks he’s going to suggest taking Chuck, but instead he says, “Why don’t you take Gabriel?”

“What, seriously?” Gabriel says, shooting onto his feet like someone lit a rocket under his ass. “I get to do fieldwork?”

“He’s much more qualified to assess the site than I,” Castiel argues, almost like he doesn’t know that Winchester and Gabriel aren’t allowed in a car alone together after the Time with the Thing. “It would be the wise decision.”

Gabriel half-laughs (like Winchester cares about the _wise decision,_ seriously) and glances over at Winchester, expectantly hopeful for whatever explosive form Winchester’s denial would take _this_ time. But instead, Winchester was just nodding and looking thoughtful.

“You’ve got a point,” he admits, and Gabriel gapes at him, because _what the actual fuck,_ and then Winchester turns back to him. “Can you be ready in ten minutes?”

“Give me five,” Gabriel says, too numb with shock to respond with the “no, seriously, what’s wrong with you?” that should have been his first thought, and Winchester _smiles at him approvingly._

“Awesome, meet you out front,” he says, and then brushes his knuckles across Castiel’s shoulder with an affectionate smile before breezing out of the room. Gabriel stares blankly at the door.

“What,” he says flatly, “just happened.”

Castiel exchanges a quick glance with Jo, who’s been sitting at the desk doing her best to stay out of this little drama. “I believe you just agreed to go with Dean to assess a potential crime scene?” Castiel tries, like he’s not sure why Gabriel isn’t following this.

“Yeah, but- what! What!” Gabriel flails his hands inarticulately. “He hates me! I’m not allowed in his car ever again, and definitely not without adult supervision! That’s a direct quote!”

Castiel exchanges _another_ look with Jo, and then says gently, “Had you not considered that perhaps something has changed since then?”

Gabriel doesn’t believe in rending at his hair like a gothic heroine, because he has great hair and it would be a waste of the thousands of dollars of product he uses in order to achieve his awesome just-rolled-out-of-bed sexiness, but in this case he might find it in his heart to _make a goddamn exception._ “Cas. Seriously. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You almost _died,_ you fucking retard!” Jo bursts out, then immediately looks ashamed of herself when Castiel gives her an excoriating look.

“Despite her unfortunate phrasing,” Castiel says pointedly, because Castiel makes time to care about appropriate language and makes sure that everyone else cares too or _else,_ “Jo is essentially correct. Dean was very worried about you when you were taken. We all were,” Castiel corrects, and in his eyes and Jo’s Gabriel can see all of those empty hours, helplessly waiting for something to happen, for them to be needed, for Gabriel to be found. Gabriel looks away and down at the floor.

“Dean, though, Dean was a little… messed up,” Jo says, softer now. “It wasn’t just some case to him. He grabbed the case from Henrickson and Henrickson tried to get it back and Dean _punched him,_ okay, right in front of everybody, and there would have been an official reprimand in his file except Ellen talked to Henrickson and made it go away.”

Gabriel didn’t know any of that. It’s hard for him to picture, because he’s never gotten along with Winchester and that’s always suited him perfectly well. He can see it with Cas, obviously, or Jo or Anna, or even Chuck, who Winchester looks after because he belongs to Cas and that’s how Winchester’s caveman brain _works._ But he can’t picture Dean Winchester going apeshit over _him._

“When Chuck determined where you must have been taken, Dean left so quickly that he almost left me behind,” Castiel says, and that’s what does it.

Gabriel still can’t remember most of that time, and he probably never will, and that’s okay because he doesn’t really want to remember. But there is one memory, coming back to him now: Winchester carrying him out of the warehouse, and being laid on the ground with Castiel’s hands on him, looking him over, handling him like he handles skeletons that he’s afraid will collapse under his touch. That’s nothing new, but now he remembers Winchester standing over him, barking orders into his radio and taking his gun out of his holster with trembling hands, checking it over and then wordlessly putting it into an evidence bag from the back of his van. And then he knelt down into the mud and he looked in Gabriel’s face and when he saw he was awake, he smiled like he did when Missouri brought Jack to see him, that one time they’d spent Christmas trapped in the lab. Dean Winchester, who hated to kill people almost more than he hated anything else in the world, put three bullets into the chest of the man who took him and then _smiled._

“Oh,” Gabriel says, and abruptly feels very stupid.

Jo and Castiel both nod. “You’re his team, Gabe,” Jo tells him. “The kidnapping just made him realize that he doesn’t have to like you for that to be true.”

And embarrassingly, Gabriel is realizing that the same is true for him. He doesn’t like Winchester- _Dean._ He probably never will, but he’d put his life on the line for Dean just the same as he would for Castiel or Jo and that’s a pretty heady realization to have for someone who’s valued himself over pretty much everything else his entire life. He’s not entirely sure what to do with this new knowledge.

And then he glances at his watch and he realizes that he doesn’t have time to figure it out now, because _shit,_ he told Dean five minutes and now he’s got two left. He gives both of them a panicked grin and then _bolts,_ and as he tears through his workstation gathering his kit he can hear Jo laughing behind him. It’s a good sound.

He’s out front and sliding into the seat of Dean’s Impala with seconds to spare, and Dean gives him an approving glance. “You’re quick,” he says. “Normally Cas leaves me waiting for at least ten minutes.”

This is perhaps the first time that Gabriel has been complimentarily compared to Castiel in his _entire life._ “…Have science kit, will travel, that’s me,” Gabriel says, a little faintly. It’s going to take a _while_ to get used to this.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and Dean, with his superhuman hearing, picks up on it. “It’s it’s Bobby nagging about the crime scene, tell him I’ll take care of it,” he says. Gabriel checks the screen.

“It’s not Bobby,” he says. It’s Sam. It’s hard to tell through all the exclamation points, but he’s pretty sure that Sam was displeased about receiving the message in the middle of a consult.

And then another text comes through, from Sam again. This one says, _All that being said: I’m really looking forward to dinner tonight. And dessert._

It’s kind of stupid, how lucky he is, Gabriel thinks. He’s on his way to do a job he loves, driven by someone who doesn’t like him but would happily kill for him, and at the end of the day he’s going to go home with a guy he’s kind of in love with and with an extremely hot blonde who makes him laugh who he could fall in love with pretty easily, too. This is, pretty much any way you look at it, a pretty goddamn awesome day.

“Your grin terrifies me, Gabriel,” Dean tells him, not taking his eyes off the road. Gabriel grins to himself.

“That’s how I know I’m doing something right,” he replies, and then sits back in his seat, feeling like all is right with the world.

**Author's Note:**

> So [twentysomething](http://twentysomething.dreamwidth.org/profile) has been doing this awesome thing for the month of November where she's been posting a bunch of snippets from various WIP's, and has basically left a bit of joy on my flist mostly-daily basis all this month. So, in response I am posting my fanfic-of-fanfic that I was compelled to write for her awesome, awesome Supernatural/Bones fusion, [Excerpts from Caver Edlund's Magnum Opus](http://twentysomething.dreamwidth.org/8149.html) (Dean/Cas, Sam/emotions, Gabriel/wheat). Dean is Booth, Cas is Bones, Jo is Angela, SAM IS SWEETS, and Gabriel is HODGINS, WHAT, so of course this, like, spoke to my soul. And then we had a whole [exchange](http://twentysomething.dreamwidth.org/8229.html?thread=231973#cmt231973) in the comments about how Dean is, like, tragically protective of his squints and only mocks them with love, and he'd go apeshit if someone fucked with Gabriel... and then this story happened.


End file.
